


What the Water Gave Me

by SuperstringSymphony



Category: Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Because Steve Was Brought up Catholic, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Presumed Dead, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2019-05-19 07:19:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14869221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperstringSymphony/pseuds/SuperstringSymphony
Summary: “What does love feel like to you?” Rhodey asks, months later, beside him on a deserted strip of beach along the Seattle coastline. He’s building a company here, something new, a lighthouse he hopes will draw the one meant for him, even if he knows it won’t.“I don’t know.” Tony whispers, standing with his feet in the sand. The surf breaks over his ankles, soaks the legs of his trousers. “I think it feels like drowning.”-A soulmate Au where people have tastes, smells, sometimes sensations or visions based upon what their soulmate is doing.  For someone who's soulmate is trapped in ice, half dreaming for decades, a soulbond is a different entity altogether.





	1. Oh My Love Don't Forsake Me

**Author's Note:**

> Setting-I've chosen a mishmash of 616 and MCU for the setting. This is blue eyed 616 Tony, and many of the locations will be 616 locations-the mansion etc. However the tech and some of the characters roles are pulled from MCU.
> 
> I was thinking about a soulmate Au where people have tastes, smells, sometimes sensations or visions based upon what their soulmate is doing. It’s not constant, but it’s a sort of brief telepathy. They may also have dreams that briefly ‘connect’ them in a sense, although communication between two soulmates is rare, it is occasionally possible if the connection between the soulmates is particularly strong. I got to thinking about what that would be like in a scenario with Stevetony as the pairing.
> 
> WARNINGS FOR: Howard being an abusive piece of shit. Also extensive talk of drowning for obvious reasons-and ANGST, lots of that.

Tony dreams of the ocean first.  Not a white sand beach or the clear blue waters of the Mediterranean his mother loves so much, but a dark and choking thing.  Swirling dark, an impenetrable wall of water so cold it burns.  Tony dreams of drowning first.  Tony dreams of regret, and fear, and a resolve so strong he still wakes shaking with that certainty.

He tastes too, blood behind his teeth, like he’s been punched in the mouth, sucks it back behind his lips, doesn’t spit it out (he knows what being hit feels like, tastes like after all).  Sweet pungent cigar smoke sometimes filters into his senses, like Obie’s, blown in his face with no regard for young lungs. It’s a comfort, sitting with Obie and showing him new designs, his small hands dwarfed by Obie’s large ones as he points at things and asks what they are.  Tony smiles, and breathes in hazy air with the bright feeling that someone feels pride in what he does.  He likes that taste when it comes, wonders what his other half is doing now, thinking now to evoke such a thing.  

He wonders if his soulmate will be proud, if they will love him.  Tony wants so desperately to be loved. He knows, it doesn’t matter what his soulmate looks like, he’ll cherish them.  Hold them close.  Careful like his mothers’ pearls when he buckles the tiny filigree gold clasp around her wrist. His mother who is not Howard’s soulmate.  His mother who teaches him to play the piano and cries tears clearer than the ocean in his dreams when she thinks no one is looking.  

Sometimes he catches whiffs of cologne. It’s woodsy and fresh, similar but different to Howard’s favorite scent-and he wonders, locked away in his room, drawing the watery shapes he sees in dreams across paper-he wonders if his other half is his father’s age.  Thinks of the whispers that follow Howard.  “Such a young son” they say, reading his father’s gray hair like the rings on a tree.  He listens and wonders if he finds his One, will they brush him aside?  Will they call him foolish, will they look at his designs for clean energy and solar fuel, and crumple them up, wad them up like paper, like his heart every time Howard turns away.  

He knows there are soulmates who are friends, he wonders if his will be a friend  _and_ a lover.  It doesn’t matter at all though, Tony will love them no matter what.  That resolve burns in him, drives him on.  What kind of man would his soulmate love?  Tony doesn’t know, but he sets out to become that person with a single minded focus.  He builds wonders, blows past records others have set before him, uses everything in him to build a future for the one calling to his soul.  He immerses himself in it, ignores the bitter taste of sadness when Howard kicks him out for refusing to build, refusing to contribute to a world his soulmate would not like.  Maria is proud but sad, as she always is. She insures he is not cut off completely, she sends packages with his favorite sweets, letters asking him to come back home.  Promises that Howard misses him, promises that he’s changed. Obie comes to visit him later, sweet words and cigar smoke ringing around his head in clouds of lies.  Tony ignores him.  

Sometimes he wonders if that would have changed things.  If him being with his parents somehow would have prevented the accident.  If his absence had driven Howard to drink more.  It doesn’t matter now.  The rain drives down  as they lower his parents into the ground, Obie’s hand is heavy on his shoulder, but not as heavy as the dreams that night.

“Are you looking for me?”  He calls, staring out into the black expanse of swirling water.  The weight of the ocean is crushing him down, but he’s trapped.  Metal skeletons bear him down, glowing controls grow dark.  In that murky deep a pair of hands reach for him-gloved hands in brown leather-and Tony reaches back desperately.  

Tony wakes with a gasp before their hands can touch.


	2. Lay Me Down, Let the Only Sound, Be the Overflow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in this chapter for-Some suicidal ideation on Tony’s part, religious imagery, angst, and of course a lot of discussion of drowning. 
> 
> Comments and kudos mean the world to me and I cherish each and every one!

Summer comes, and with it, the visions always grow stronger. Summer is always a strange thing for Tony, cold and hot and filled with shivering dreams of a time that seems long past. He wakes with the taste of salt in his mouth, frozen cold ringed around his hands. Tea and coffee do nothing, and the first sip he spits out, sinking onto the floor of his kitchen, knees striking tile, the drink tasting of seawater. **  
**

“Where are you, please tell me, where are you?” He knows there will be no answer. Twenty two years and there has never been an answer. There are tears on his face, salty and wet where they slip over his lips. Tony closes his eyes, shuts them tight against the tide rocking him to and fro.  Rhodey is visiting, and Tony thinks of going to him, waking him, but he’s shaking too much to stand.

The mug in his hand clatters to the floor, shattering on impact, spilling its contents across the floor. It smells of incense, smoky trails oozing from a thurible, swinging slow like the rhythm of a thudding heart. Tony breathes in deep, and opens his eyes.

He’s standing in a church. Bare feet cold on old, old wooden flooring. Somewhere a soaring choir sings, voices raised in a language he doesn’t know.  Tony can’t see them.  Hazy light filters in, casting long shadows across a figure bent over a coffin. Outside the water waits, swirling along the windows as if it wants to get in, but Tony pays it no mind. The statue of a woman dominates the room. Robed in white, she points to her heart, seven swords refract light, but her face is serene. Tony looks away from her-steps closer to the figure near the coffin, beneath his feet wood creaks, loud like a thunderclap.

“Codladh sámh mam.” Tony hears as if from far away. The room seems to stretch, the aisle lengthening, and tony needs to reach him, has to reach him.

Tony runs, hand reaching towards the only other occupant in this place. Sunlight filters in, the ends of blond hair seemingly catch fire. A wreath of light about his soulmate’s face. Blue, blue eyes, bluer than the sky, bluer than the lapis powder his soulmate grinds into paints with shaking hands. Tony knows those hands even if his body is unfamiliar. Tony knows the color of his eyes, knows the shape of his lips. He runs, and the ground tilts beneath his feet, the windows shatter, and then the ocean is there, dragging him under as it always does. He’s sinking, falling, pushed backwards as if by some massive force, the skeleton of a plane, ghastly and terrible serving as his prison. He’s pulled back against a strong chest, lips on his, sharing air, and Tony isn’t afraid of drowning any longer.

Tony wakes with the taste of salt water in his mouth, collapsed in the kitchen with Rhodey shaking him, eyes wide and worried as Tony coughs and chokes on the floor, his lungs full of water on dry land.

“Your soulmate, I know you have one-what does it feel like to you, love?” Tony asks sometime later, watching Rhodey’s expression shift, stars reflected in his dark eyes. They’re sitting on the roof of the mansion in New York. It’s empty and hollow, Tony doesn’t want to go back inside. Somewhere in the kitchen his shattered cup lies there, pieces jagged and broken apart. Tony can’t think of that now.

“Oh.” Rhodey breathes, a wide smile creasing his beloved and familiar face, making it new. “It feels like flying.”

Tony doesn’t ask again.

* * *

“What does love feel like to you?” Rhodey asks, months later, beside him on a deserted strip of beach along the Seattle coastline. He’s building a company here, something new, a lighthouse he hopes will draw the one meant for him, even if he knows it won’t.

“I don’t know.” Tony whispers, standing with his feet in the sand. The surf breaks over his ankles, soaks the legs of his trousers. “I think it feels like drowning.”

He’s not afraid of the ocean, it’s been drowning him for years. He sinks down, lets it carve paths around him, lets it kick up swirling whirlpools of silt around his body-lets his knees dig divots into the sand. He sinks down and lets it wash over him, briny and salt wet-a different kind of baptismal he hopes will somehow call to the other side of his soul.

Behind his eyelids stars burst. A glowing cube held aloft blinks and winks, it feels sinister somehow. Tony knows it, remembers it-drawings on paper, Howard yelling in frustration as it refused to give up its secrets. Tony loves the stars, bright and shining, high above, fascinating to think that their light can reach the earth long after the source has died.

Sometimes Tony thinks his soulmate is like a star.

There are myths around soulmates. Legends that tell of memories being left behind if a soulmate dies before meeting their other half. Sometimes in the dark, when the creaking of a plane is loud in his ears, and there’s ice in his lungs-sometimes he thinks of those stories.

“ _Get up, get up, you’ll drown_.” It twists through his mind urgently. It’s panicked, harsh, lower east side accent ringing in his ears. Tony gasps, chokes as Rhodey lifts him out of the water, but the ocean is still rushing in his ears. Tony stares out at the water unseeingly as Rhodey shakes him, rubs his arms, grabs his face and asks him questions he can’t answer. He thinks of the plane, of gloved hands reaching, of the endless dark, of old soldier’s songs he can sing but has never heard. He thinks of flashing numbers, longitude and latitude. Tony blinks.

“Coordinates!” He gasps, pulling out of Rhodey’s grip to wobble to his feet. “Coordinates, it’s coordinates, Rhodey, Rhodey, I love you!” He says, leaning down to grab Rhodey’s face and pull him into a smacking kiss. He gets rolled back into the sand for his efforts, but it just makes him laugh. It’s an odd laugh, the laugh of a man on his way to the gallows. Those coordinates are in the middle of the ocean, Tony knows. If his soulmate is leading him there, it’s likely to his body.

“Coordinates!” Tony repeats, and then he’s sinking down, head in his hands as he sobs, tears spilling through his fingers to leave specks of moisture on damp sand. Rhodey holds him until the tremors stop, until his grief simmers into something quiet and barren-a sucking wound where his heart should be. Tony will find him, it’s the least he can do. His soulmate has left him a map, in stars, in numbers, in the shifting shadows of a sunken plane.

 _I’m coming for you_. He thinks, even as it leaves him bleeding, he knows there is no way he will find a living man.


	3. Time it Took us, To Where the Water Was

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is from Steve's perspective. The usual warnings apply, some religious imagery, talk of drowning, and presumed character death. (no one is really dead though as we know)

Steve dreams of blue eyes first-not his own blue, these are more aqua to his cornflower, with long black eyelashes, wide, and beautiful, and they are everything. He dreams of the rasp of facial hair along his cheek, quick hands, the smell of metal and an insatiable curiosity. Tall buildings-so tall they make the empire state herself seem shy by comparison. He sits in his sickbed, frail, wracked with cough and fever and wonders how such a thing could be.

Will he be old when they meet? Will he be ancient and stooped with age, wintering and faded next to the vibrant life of his soulmate? Because he is vibrant, beautiful and so real and wonderful Steve wakes some mornings reaching for him. Who is he? He wonders. This bright shining light standing at the gates of the future.

“Some, mo lus na gréine, some, my darling, they see things that have not come to pass yet. It only means you will travel far. To see these things, it means your soulmate loves you very much, and you will find each other one day.” His mother says, taking her usual spot on his bed. She looks both happy and sad. “Here, take this, it will keep you safe when I can't travel with you.” She reaches then to undo the gold clasp about her neck drawing out her saint Christopher's medal and passing it into his trembling hands. He hasn't been able to draw for weeks, too exhausted, too frail to even lift a pencil. He wonders how he will even live to see the wonders in his dreams, if it's all just fevered imaginings, wishful thinking. He tries to give it back, but she won't hear of it, pressing it back into his hand with a stubbornness that mirrors his own.

He doesn't wonder if his body will hold out anymore as he clutches the medal in his hands much later in a camp behind enemy lines. His mother is long gone, and his old body with all its aches and pains is too. Still he keeps her gift to him close. “Thank you for keeping me safe.” he whispers to the shining medallion around his neck, tucked beneath his mail shirt.

After the mission is done and they are safe again, It flashes there, between his clavicles later when he shaves and neatens his hair. In the mirror his eyes seem dull, determined, he is marching towards something; what, he does not know. His evening is interrupted by one of the invaders popping his head in. There is a young boy behind him, looking contrite and resigned all at once.

“Kid tagged along with the unit, says coming with us is the only way he'll meet his soulmate. What do you want us to do Cap?” Jim probably already knows the answer to that.

He still asks to get a look at the kid, and he sees that look in the boy's face too, the same haunting emptiness and longing in his own every morning. “They say I'll die before I meet her.” He whispers, small hands clenched against his sides in anger.

“How do you know they're a her?” He knows the one for him will be a man, knows it in the glimpses of blue eyes he sees in dreams. Strong hands, a face he will never touch. Frozen in time like the saints his mother lit candles for on Sunday mass.

“Her hair is red, I've seen it, her love feels like blood, mine too, I feel it, in my hands.” He says, frustrated and resigned as all are when speaking of a love they have yet to meet.

“What's your name, son?” Steve asks, knowing already they won't kick him out.

“It's James, James Buchanan Barnes.”  His shoulders are rounded down in contrition, but his voice is steady, with a snap of fierceness behind it that Steve admires already.

“Well James, welcome to the Invaders, can't say we'll help you find her, but we could always use someone with a fighting spirit.” There is a part of him that balks at someone so young joining the team, but he himself is young, and this war has younger soldiers, younger casualties. He remembers what it was like to be sent away, to be told he couldn't fight, that he was too young, too weak, too sickly. He will not do the same here now.

Time passes, he fights battles, completes missions he never could have imagined, and he forgets what his mother told him-forgets to keep the medallion close, passing it off to Howard Stark on the eve of a dangerous mission.

“Bring it back” He says, closing it into Stark's hand. “it will keep you safe.”

In the end Bucky is right, in the end he dies long before they ever come across his soulmate, and he never gets his medal back, sinking down, down into water so cold it burns. He must be dying, he must be. The last thing he thinks before the blackness claims him, is of blue eyes, and a warm voice calling him home.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This can also be found on my [tumblr](https://ilunabarrean.tumblr.com/post/174638094357/soulmate-au) if you prefer that format.


End file.
